43,500. We are talking about a city the size of Cochella (which ironically is a sanctuary city consistent with Sniff’s cancellation of cooperation with ICE). La Quinta is another city that size that comes to mind. Imagine the entire population being felons and them getting released early before finishing their sentences.

Stan Sniff is flailing to try and get out from underneath the truth. The problem is his lackeys in the media take occasional stabs at journalism – such as the Desert Sun which has written a few articles about the early release crisis.

But the county doesn’t have a specific date for when the new jail could start accepting inmates. Asked when he expects the jail to be ready for occupancy, Sniff said: “(I was) verbally told
September or October this year. But it’s not done ’til it’s done!”
The $330 million jail, which will replace a 353-bed facility on the same site, will add more than 1,200 beds to a five-jail, 3,900-bed system chronically plagued by crowding.

Got that? The small inadequate new jail in Indio is going to kind of open. The jail that Stan Sniff killed along with the feckless late John Benoit would have been 6,500 beds.

Instead, we get pieces of a 1200 bed jail that adds minimal capacity to the system with no real other hopes for more capacity any time soon.

More than 5,700 people were released early last year, and almost 3,000 have been turned loose early so far in 2018.